You and your BFF share the same brain patterns, according to science

A new scientific study has revealed that we share the same brain patterns with our BFF. And it makes perfect sense to all BFFs, everywhere.

You both like the same the films. You both crack the same jokes. Which is why it can sometimes feel like you have a never-ending list of things in common with your best friend. But that’s why they’re your BFF, right?

But it turns out, your BFF actually does ‘just get you’. Because, basically, you’re both on the same wavelength, with a recent study finding that your shared similarities even extend to brain activity.

Conducted by Dartmouth College, the research involved examining the brain activity of students as they watched old videos. From America’s Funniest Home Videos to CNN’s Crossfire, all of the videos differed in content.

And the MRI scans discovered that the closer the friend, the closer the brain activity. From motivation to attention and judgment, the same parts of people’s brains lit up in close friends. Due to this, researchers were even able to predict which participants were friends – guessing correctly every time.

“People who responded more similarly to the videos shown in the experiment were more likely to be closer to one another in their shared social network, and these effects were significant even when controlling for inter-subject similarities in demographic variables, such as age, gender, nationality, and ethnicity,” the authors wrote.

You really are on the same wavelength as your BFF.

And the study shows that friends do really think the same way.

“Our results suggest that friends might be similar in how they pay attention to and process the world around them,” said Carolyn Parkinson, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“That shared processing could make people click more easily and have the sort of seamless social interaction that can feel so rewarding.”

So, does this mean that we pick people exactly like ourselves?

“We think both are happening,” author Adam Kleinbaum told Business Insider. But having the same brain activity is good thing, according to the researchers, as it “may be rewarding because it reinforces one’s own values, opinions, and interests.”